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Study of semi-fossilised trees gives accurate climate reading back to 138BC
World was warmer in Roman and Medieval times than it is now

How did the Romans grow grapes in northern England? Perhaps because it was warmer than we thought.

A study suggests the Britain of 2,000 years ago experienced a lengthy period of hotter summers than today.

German researchers used data from tree rings – a key indicator of past climate – to claim the world has been on a ‘long-term cooling trend’ for two millennia until the global warming of the twentieth century.

This cooling was punctuated by a couple of warm spells.

These are the Medieval Warm Period, which is well known, but also a period during the toga-wearing Roman times when temperatures were apparently 1 deg C warmer than now.

They say the very warm period during the years 21 to 50AD has been underestimated by climate scientists.

It's not how old you are, it's how you got here.It's been a long road and not all of it was paved.A man is but a product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes. Gandhi

Originally Posted by Carol

When I judge someone's integrity one key thing I look at is - How does s/he treat people s/he doesn't agree with or does not like?
I can respect someone who I do not agree with, but I have NO respect for someone who puts others down in a public forum. That is the hallmark of someone who has no integrity, and cannot be trusted.

I saw this show on one of the allegedly educational channels offered by Comcast a show about the theory that the Atlantis referred to by Plato was actually the Minoan empire, based on Crete and Thera (there's another name for the island, and it escapes me at the moment). The theory goes that when the volcano blew on Thera, it ultimately destroyed the Minoan Empire with the associated tsunami and earthquakes.

The scientists were using tree rings from trees in Central America to make this determination-the massive explosion of that particular volcano would have caused massive changes to the weather for more than a year. They never really proved the overall theory about Atlantis, but they did prove that the volcanic explosion was massive enough to effect the weather patterns for the entire planet, kind of like the way we never had much of a summer when that volcano in the Phillipines exploded in the 90s.

A more modern theory attributes tree growth during a time of global cold temperatures during the Little Ice Age associated with unusually low solar activity of the Maunder Minimum, circa 1645 to 1750, during which cooler temperatures throughout Europe are believed to have caused stunted and slowed tree growth, resulting in unusually dense wood. Further evidence for this "Little Ice Age theory" comes from a simple examination of the dense growth rings in the wood used in Stradivari's instruments. Two researchers – University of Tennessee tree-ring scientist Henri Grissino-Mayer and Lloyd Burckle, a Columbia University climatologist – published in the journal Dendrochronologia their conclusions supporting the theory on increased wood density.

In 2008 Dutch researchers announced further evidence that wood density caused the claimed high quality of these instruments. After examining the violins with X-rays, the researchers found that these violins all have extremely consistent density, with relatively low variation in the apparent growth patterns of the trees that produced this wood.

(snip)

Four boxes keep us free: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

No one has ever matched the quality of violins that the houses of Cremona made in their heyday. I read a really good bio of Stradivarius a few years ago-he made instruments to the day he died.

When I went on a tour of Colonial Williamsburg as a teen, I made sure one of our stops was the violin-maker (the other I had to see was the book maker). The best american makers are hired to work there, and the guy working there that day explained to us that no matter how good he was, he would never be as good as Stradivarius or Guanuari. He said that the forests that they used were gone, and no wood since has been of the same quality. So he was right, he just didn't know why he was right in the 70s.

I miss playing the violin. I haven't been able to do so since I broke my arm a few years ago. I just can't move my bow arm the right way. I'm thinking of getting a harmonica and using it to substitute for cigarettes.